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NEWS AND VIEWS THAT IMPACT LIMITED CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT

"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with
power to endanger the public liberty." - - - - John Adams

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

ISIS Within Shelling Range of Baghdad Airport



















Obama's Frankenstein Keeps Marching
  • Follow me here.  We ship mountains of weapons into Syria to arm assorted Islamists groups.  Naturally the armed Islamists use the weapons to expand the lands they control.  We refuse to arm the Kurds to fight ISIS, and then we use just enough airpower (but not too much) to keep the Islamists in check. 
  • A an insane Blogger like myself might conclude we don't really want the Islamists to be totally defeated. Maybe, just maybe, we want to keep the area in a perpetual state of anarchy.  But I am just a crazy Blogger.  What do I know?


The United States appears to be losing its fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) in Iraq and Syria, experts say, as the jihadist group adapts to U.S. airstrikes and advances toward Baghdad and a strategic town on the Syrian-Turkish border.

McClatchy reported on Friday that ISIL had established an operational presence in Abu Ghraib, a town within miles of the capital Baghdad that could enable the militants to shell the Baghdad International Airport with artillery. The airport serves as a key transit point for Western embassies and houses a joint operations center with U.S. military advisers.

A Defense Department spokeswoman said there were no indications yet that ISIL had taken over Abu Ghraib.

ISIL has also made significant gains in recent days in Iraq’s western Anbar province, where it has seized the town of Hit and launched assaults on other military bases in the region. Hundreds of Iraqi soldiers have been captured, and U.S. and allied airstrikes appear to have failed to push back ISIL from its strongholds in Anbar reports the Washington Free Beacon.

Viet Cong
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The Power of a Guerilla War
It looks like ISIS may play it smart and have their troops blend into the civilian population in a classic guerilla war campaign.  Allied jets would have to bomb and slaughter countless civilians to get at hidden troops.  With every corpse of a dead child or woman dragged out of the rubble of a U.S. attack there will be a massive worldwide propaganda campaign that will recruit even more fighters to the ISIS cause.
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Despite the horrors of Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq the "best and the brightest" in our military appear to be clueless about the power of guerilla warfare.
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Guerilla warfare has existed from the American Revolution to our Civil War to Apache Wars to the Philippine-American War (1899-1913).  But somehow the civilians and our generals keep wanting to re-fight the same losing battles.
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See more Guerrilla Warfare

In Syria, ISIL engaged in intense fighting on Monday with Kurdish forces in Kobani—a key town near the Turkish border that could grant Islamic militants new smuggling lines for fighters and supplies if they control it. U.S. airstrikes have also failed to relieve ISIL’s siege of Kobani.

Additionally, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday that ISIL fighters have adopted new tactics to evade airstrikes and retain control of territory, including avoiding the use of cell phones and radios, removing their leaders and weapons from bases in Syria, and blending in with the civilian population.

Wayne Hsieh, an associate professor at the U.S. Naval Academy and a former State Department official who served in Iraq, said in an interview that “things are not going well.”

While pussyfied American children play with their toy phones
Islamic State children use their phones to call in mortar strikes.

”The problem at the end of the day is how seriously [President Obama] takes this,” he said.

”Is this the president’s response to political pressure placed on him after the execution of [American journalist James] Foley, or does he really want to degrade and destroy the Islamic State? If he really does want to degrade and destroy the Islamic State, I think you’re going to have to see escalation, but the situation on the ground militarily is so problematic.”

Hsieh said he did not believe Baghdad was close to falling to ISIL, but added that sustained attacks on the airport there would pose a serious threat to supplies for Western embassies and the U.S. military personnel that are stationed there. He questioned why the United States had not provided arms to the YPG, the Syrian Kurdish forces battling ISIL in Kobani that previously helped save tens of thousands of Yazidis in Iraq.

Turkey, whose parliament voted last week to authorize strikes in Iraq and Syria, still has not aided the Syrian Kurds because of their ties to the PKK, a group that both Ankara and Washington have designated as a terrorist organization.

(Translation  -  Kurds in Islamist Turkey are declared to be "terrorists" because they want freedom.  But just a few feet away over the border Kurds in Iraq & Syria are declared to be our "friends".  But in both cases the Kurds are not given arms by the U.S. to defend themselves against ISIS.)

Hsieh noted that the U.S. military and its allies are largely using bases in the Persian Gulf to strike ISIL in Iraq and Syria, meaning their planes have to cover longer distances and must spend more time refueling than if they had bases in Iraq. Operating from Iraq would likely require more U.S. troops on the ground to secure the bases.


Islamist Turkey Attacks BBC News Crew




Syrian Army at war with Islamic State - BBC News
Let's see here . . . warmonger Democrats and Republicans wanted us to attack
the Syrian Army that is fighting ISIS and other Islamists.




British "MI-5 gave me the green light to go Syria"




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